To Build LawCanadian Centre for Architecture1920 Baile Street, MontrealOn view through May 25What do architects do? At the risk of eliding the many other forms of labor involved, the easy answer is to say that they make buildings. Whether through physical or intellectual effort, the production of new buildings has been at the center of architectures disciplinary focus for centuries. Given the burning need to address climate change and other matters of pressing ecological concern, the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal has commissioned Groundwork, a series of three film-based exhibitions presenting the work of architects whose modes of practice shift their focus from completed buildings onto the processes of the buildings becoming. The highly compelling and fiercely urgent second chapter in this trilogy is now on display at the CCA. To Build Law presents Berlin-based bplus.xyz (b+)s campaign to use direct democracy within the European Unions governance structures to apply political pressure in favor of renovation and against demolition. Spearheaded by Arno Brandlhuber (b+), Olaf Grawert (b+), and Alina Ana Kolar (station+), the idea is straightforward: Given the embodied carbon and other material outlays present in Europes existing building stock, to demolish extant structures and replace them with new builds seems wholly incompatible with existing emissions-reduction commitments and public opinion. Fittingly, b+ is correctly and judiciously seeking to change the series of financial and regulatory norms that favor new builds on cleared sites.Installation view of To Build Law CCA. (Matthieu Brouillard/ CCA)To do so, b+ has partnered with station+ (s+, a teaching and research platform at ETH Zrich that uses film and television as narrative tools) and others to found HouseEurope!, an NGO gathering collaborators from several European countries to launch the European Citizens Initiative. If they can gather over one million signatures from EU citizens during a 12-month period, the European Commission will be obliged to consider their proposal, which calls for three changes: (1) to boost renovation markets with tax incentives, (2) to institute fair and harmonized standards for renovation, and (3) to apply intemporal life cycle assessments in the building sector. The current iteration of the office founded by Brandlhuber in 2006, b+ has demonstrated the ecological value (and photogenic appeal) of adaptive reuse through well-known projects such as Brunnenstrae 9 and San Gimignano Lichtenberg. The challenges that made these sites unappealing for speculative development created the very conditions that have allowed b+ to successfully intervene. Often, b+ has introduced ecological arguments where aesthetic appeals have previously failedfor example the successful campaign to prevent the demolition of Berlins Brutalist Musebunker, a former animal testing laboratory.Conceptually, To Build Law is divided chronologically into three parts. The first, presented across two galleries, covers the period 200723 and gives a project-based history of b+s practice. In addition to the works mentioned above, b+s incipient attempts at political activism are featured, such as its 2011 intervention in the Berlin state elections, in which it critiqued all major parties failure to address housing concerns. With Archipel, a 2012 exhibition, b+ reflected on the danger that its adaptive reuse projects were in fact contributing to the homogenization of Berlin. As with many recent CCA exhibitions, the materials illustrating b+s biography are presented horizontally on tables in a nonhierarchical fashion, leaving the visitor free to choose which items are worthy of more concentrated attention. Turning to the near present, To Build Law presents a 50-minute film directed by Joshua Frank that follows Brandlhuber, Grawert, and Kolar as they plan HouseEurope!s European Citizens Initiative. Viewers follow these principals through a series of meetings, lectures, and planning sessions. While the consequences of what they propose are radicalnothing less than the fundamental redirection of the European building industry and its laborers away from new construction toward adaptive reusetheir methods are presented as banal. Slow and thoughtful work within existing systems is central to their vision of activism, which is illustrated by the amount of time Franks camera spends on the setting up for and putting away of chairs after meetings. These gatherings are well lit, everyone speaks clearly, and disagreements lead to dialectical synthesis: Should Stop Demolition! or Ready for Renovation be the movements slogan? The answer is simple: It will be a combination of both.HouseEurope! assembly at Tempelhof Airport, Berlin, 2024, from the documentary film To Build Law. ( CCA)The same aesthetic smoothness present in b+s projects guides its attempts to influence the European political system. This is not a revolution from below, and hints of (West) Berlins radical politics and environmentalism of the 1970s and 80s are few and far between in To Build Law. Reuse is not a matter of squatting in neglected structures; instead, we follow Grawert and Kolar as they meet with a Swiss consultant who advises them how to market their campaign. Berlins history of ground-up activism on spatial issues offers, however, a clear prehistory for the initiative. To Build Law concludes with an assembly at the former Tempelhof Airport, an immense urban structure frequently at the heart of debates over what kind of city Berlin should become.If architecture is to follow b+ and HouseEurope!s lead, what are its chances of success? If the needed signatures are gathered, will the European Commission enact new laws? Globally, it seems doubtful, with President Donald Trump back in the White House, Canadas own carbon tax unlikely to survive the outcome of its next federal election, and Europes political-industrial consensus still shaken by rising energy prices caused by Russias invasion of Ukraine. Here the film gets across two crucial points. The first is that any political coalition in favor of adaptive reuse will be heterodox. As Grawert observes, many small-town conservatives unconvinced by modernist architecture already oppose new construction that will alter their picturesque townscapes. (But what happens when such people block new constructions to densify existing cities? The film does not answer this question, and viewers are left to suppose that all new building is in fact wasteful.)The second is that campaigns for adaptive reuse will necessarily excite some portion of the public more than other parts. Whereas measures favoring housing abundance and cost limitation may appeal to renters, subsidies for renovation are principally directed toward current homeowners. Generational unease also comes into play: While middle-aged professors (perhaps inspired by the specter of May 1968 and the 1973 oil crisis) may be convinced of the need for adaptive reuse, the younger generation, especially those 18 to 24 years old, is not. For Grawert, it is up to todays architecture students to convince their friends. All in all, we are left with the sense that architecture, which so often reifies the status quo, is not always an easy ally for progress, however it is defined.To Build Law exemplifies two overlapping tendencies in recent CCA exhibitions. Firstly, the use of film as a medium to reach new publics, both in terms of age and geographic location. CCA director Giovanna Borasis recent series of three films (201923) exploring new modes of living in the 21st century and curator Francesco Garuttis projects, which include Misleading Innocence: (tracing what a bridge can do) (2014), have put film at the forefront of the CCAs project. Secondly, many recent CCA exhibitions have sought to redefine architecture as a fundamentally ecological concern, one in which political and not technological solutions must rise to the fore. One example: 1973: Sorry, Out of Gas (2007) presented the 1973 oil crisis as an antecedent to our present moment and reminded visitors of the panoply of low-tech solutions popularized then and still available for use today. Its All Happening So Fast (2017) recast Canadian history as an unfolding series of ecological catastrophes. At the juncture of these, To Build Law once again invites architects and the wider public to rethink what architecture should be and how it can act as an ethical force.Installation view of To Build Law CCA. (Matthieu Brouillard/ CCA)To begin to answer this question, Grawert and Kolar organized a roundtable on Canadian policy and regulations at the CCA. Tear Down or Repair featured three young Canadian professionals, each charting their own course: Juliette Cook (Ha/f Climate Design), Alexandre Landry (LEnsemble), and Conrad Speckert (LGA Architectural Partners). While each of these three talented designers has adopted a different approach (from material reuse to changing building codes), what is most impressive is the fact that each identified a failing in the way architecture is conceived and set to work to ameliorate it.The final chronological chapter of this story looms over the exhibition: The drive to gather signatures opened on February 1.Meanwhile in Montreal, having begun with Chinese architect Xu Tiantians Into the Island (2024), Groundwork will conclude in the second half of 2025 with Carla Juaabas practice in Brazil.Peter Sealy is an architectural historian and assistant professor at the University of Toronto, where he directs the undergraduate architectural studies program. Previously, he held fellowships at the Canadian Centre for Architecture from the Power Corporation of Canada (2006) and the Mellon Foundation (201617) at CCA, where he also worked as a research assistant from 2007 to 2010.